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Notes from beyond 4: Are we all together in this?

If Gaby Hinsliff is to be believed, it seems as I’m not so much on the scrap-heap as in the vanguard of a revolution against the long-hours culture. If she’s right, people are tiring of the amount of time they are being required to give to their employers. Of course, there’s more to it than that, particularly in a vocation like teaching – but it is possible that a combination of stagnant wages, the country’s ever-growing wealth disparity and the sense that those in charge really don’t care very much really is causing the blinkers to fall.

In my case, I put my all into my career for thirty years, to an extent that is really only apparent now that I have stopped. It is what we were told we should do – by people whom, it turns out were offering illusory rewards, and who were interested in no one’s benefit so much as their own.

When, as a public sector employee one was then expected to endure pay restraint in order to bail out the bad boys of the financial sector who themselves largely escaped scot-free, one might start to ponder the distinction between having a vocation and being a mug. A few years ago, I listened to my local M.P., (herself formerly a highly-paid lobbyist for the tobacco industry) answer my question by lecturing that the public sector ‘has to bear its share of austerity’. What kind of fools do they think we are?

When one then sees those who manage (but rarely teach) not only preserving their own jobs at the expense of those in the classroom, but also awarding themselves (nationally, in percentage terms) an increasing share of the education pie, the impression can only be that the same insidious greed has infected our education sector too. “We need more!” was their ceaseless call while I worked for them; at no point did they make a serious effort to examine the impact on their employees’ wellbeing, let alone life-balance. It’s easy to emotionally-blackmail teachers, and they shamelessly used it to extract more and more from people. Eventually they exploited my own ill heath to save on the salary bill.

If it is indeed true that such experiences are widespread, then Hinsliff may well be right: especially at a time of national cynicism, people may (and should) be asking themselves significant questions about what they are doing with their lives. Just why should we be expected to accept that we foot-soldiers should do ever more now that it is increasingly apparent that the main beneficiaries are only the few at the top?

The impact of living to work is serious in less obvious ways too. A few days ago I was describing my new-found involvement with my local community to a former colleague; his reaction voiced something I have long felt: “Our society is suffering from the inability of people such as teachers, who have initiative and energy, to use them for the wider good because they have been so screwed down in their workplaces”. The live-to-work culture sweeps all before it – for what?

Hinsliff claims that vast numbers of people are doing huge amounts of unpaid overtime; why should they, when they seem decreasingly likely not only to see any benefits from this, but not even not to be treated harshly should the boss deem it necessary? I can well understand if people are starting to feel that loyalty should flow in both directions.

Hinsliff’s article reports on the growing number of people who are foregoing extra income (even at relatively low levels) because they are finding that time and quality of life are more important. Perhaps the current debate about mental health issues in society wouldn’t be so urgently needed, either, if this society itself were not so effective at making people sick in the first place. That is not an over-dramatic claim: as regular readers will know, it is my own experience.

These points all echo my own thoughts, for all that my situation was enforced. In some ways it feels rather selfish to be saying, “Enough – I want more time for me!” but at least I have already done three decades of public service. It is increasingly apparent that unless you are one of the privileged (and hypocritical) few, the current model will chew you up and spit you out with not a second thought for the fact that your life is as valuable as the next.

Medication side-effects aside, I now have the time available to attend to my own personal life first, for once. And to give better attention to the relatives, friends, neighbours and community with and in which I live. My daily routine is now such that people are commenting how much better I look; the body does not lie about such things, no matter whether it is likely to compromise corporate targets or not.

And in a world where some people have too much work while others don’t have enough, it ought to be easy enough to resolve this issue – were those in charge really at all interested in doing so. As one of Hinsliff’s (teacher) interviewees says,

“People want to have a family, or they want to have a social life. They don’t want to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” Would anything persuade him to return full-time? “I think things would have to change significantly, in terms of the expectations of staff.”

The deceit has gone on long enough, but I am afraid this country is becoming more, not less hawkish in its attitude to the world as a whole; those in charge (at all levels) very often seem not to give a damn.

In which case, the only person do something about this is us, each one our self.